A Logical Arrangement
by Cyberwolf
Summary: Neji, as usual, takes the most pragmatic way out of his predicaments. This specific solution may be a little more complicated than he thought, however. NejiTen, chapter 5 up
1. Rational Thinking

_CAPT. M. 'Wouldn't be in your shoes for anything that Asia has to  
offer._

_CAPT. G. (Spinning round.) That just shows your hideous  
blackness of soul - your dense stupidity - your brutal  
narrow-mindedness. There's only one fault about you. You're the  
best of good fellows, and I don't know what I should have done  
without you, but-you aren't married. (Wags his head gravely.)  
Take a wife, Jack._

_CAPT. M. (With a face like a wall.) Ye-essss. Whose for choice?_

- The Story of the Gadsbys, Rudyard Kipling

* * *

Passion of any sort - but particularly of the sort that affects men and women when they think they need to find a mate - was either the greatest joke of the gods, or the biggest inconvenience they laid in the path of men, or both. This was Hyuuga Neji's opinion, and twenty-three years of life, most of them as a shinobi of Konoha, had done nothing to sway him from it. He allowed that love could be a pleasant thing - he even admitted to feeling it himself, for family and for friends - but that disgraceful state that was called 'being _in_ love' was a fate that, please the gods, he would never have the misfortune to endure.

"It's as if someone had found a tenketsu that shut off rational thinking, and hit it over and over again," Neji would have said if anyone could have convinced him to elaborate. He might have cited the behavior of his peers - Lee and Naruto for Sakura, she and Yamanaka for the Uchiha, his own cousin Hinata for Naruto - for further evidence; and he might have capped it all with a disdainful "hn."

He never did, because no one could quite find the courage to ask him his opinion on the subject; but nonetheless everyone had a fair idea of it.

He placed a much higher value on steadier, less arbitrary virtues such as loyalty, courage, friendship. Love faded and passion burned out - it was much better, and more practical, he said, to base one's relationships on mutual respect, rational admiration, and - if at all possible - experience of each other.

All this - mutual respect, a calm, admiring knowledge of habits and ways, loyalty, courage, friendship and a certain ability to read her expressions - he found in his habitual sparring-partner, Tenten. So when the Hyuuga council of elders began to make noises about his 'eligible age and status' and 'very nice girls they knew', it seemed a very good idea to him that he get married to her.

* * *

**AN**

Hallo all! Here's my latest offering to the altar of Nejiten. Chapters will be probably quite short, but in return I hope to update frequently. And thanks for everyone who's expressed concern about my passport situation - it's resolved but in return I think I lost my PSP over it. I sort of careen from one bit of bad luck to another, I guess. :P

* * *


	2. Wedded Bliss

_CAPT. G. : Has it ever occurred  
to you, Madam, that you are my Wife?_

_MRS. G. : It has. I haven't ceased wondering at it yet._

_CAPT. G. : Nor I. It seems so strange; and yet, somehow, it doesn't.  
(Confidently.) You see, it could have been no one else.  
_

- Story of the Gadsbys, Rudyard Kipling

* * *

Neji proposed marriage to Tenten at 6.32 AM on a cool, gray morning in April, after an early spar and twenty-eight minutes before they had to meet Lee and Gai for an A-class escort mission. It took him only fifteen minutes to explain the situation - explain it down to the smallest detail, and in clear, honest terms so that there could be no possibility of misunderstanding. (His uncle had blundered spectacularly during his marriage proposal, and for three days his aunt had believed Hiashi had asked her to be a wet-nurse for his then-non-existent children - which she assumed he'd had with some other woman - and it took him a week of groveling to win her favor again. Which was further proof that romance reduced even strong men to idiocy, in Neji's opinion).

In a very strange voice that he had never heard from her before, she had asked for some time to consider his...offer. She had been silent and contemplative for the next few hours. Five miles outside of Konoha, as they walked alongside the caravan they had been hired to escort, she had appeared beside him - he was the vanguard, as usual, while she was supposed to be their far-ranging scout - touched his sleeve, and said, very simply, "All right," before returning to her duties.

(She sounded just like she did when agreeing to a location and time for a spar. This seemed to Neji a favorable omen for their upcoming marriage.)

* * *

Their marriage was wholly planned by the Hyuugas, specifically a group of excited females who waged polite and unceasing war over such issues as the color of the table-cloths, the size of the wedding-feast, and who got to sit where. The incipient bride and groom's only input was the submission of their names and then showing up on the appointed day (which an eerily efficient Hyuuga Haru, Hiashi's own secretary/hatchet-man, scheduled around their missions). They did not even need to show up to be fitted for their wedding finery - ("They know our measurements already with the Byakugan," Neji explained off-hand to his startled fiancee.)

The wedding was a success; the marriage, in Neji's opinion, even more so. Everything was beautifully arranged. His life hardly changed at all, and what changes that did occur were for the better. He and Tenten continued to go on missions together, and to spar together, and generally do everything together, just as they had before - only now he did not have to wait for her at pre-determined places, since they also lived together. They kept separate bedrooms, but all he had to do was knock on the door, and she was awakened. And since each bedroom had an en-suite bathroom they never had to fight over it.

Married couples were accorded the dignity and comfort of their own detached residences on the Hyuuga grounds - and because Hiashi was fond of his nephew, and pleased with his choice of bride, (and that he _had_ a choice of bride - really, some people had been beginning to whisper) Neji found himself presented with a spacious, well-furnished villa on the very edges of the estate, situated so that it felt like its own establishment. It was close to a fine training-yard, and it had a view of the forests and of the Hokages' mountain, and Neji was very pleased with it.

They had servants to take care of dull, mundane household affairs like cleaning, cooking, and the like - close-mouthed people who came and went as silent as ghosts, and did their appointed tasks without asking for either guidance or thanks. But sometimes Tenten took it into her head to spend hours at the stove, and the end result would be plates of Yong food - glossy meats, and vegetables in multi-colored sauces, and crisp, snow-white crackers made from crab that she served on bone-china, and which filled the house with fragrant steam. Neji liked this too.

And in a hundred more ways, little and large, did Neji find his life much improved by the institution of marriage.

* * *

**AN**

Look! I've married them off! (throws rice) I have _another_ story, dimly in the recesses in my mind and not on any sort of paper, regarding catastrophic marriage proposals but this isn't the story for them. Noooooo-oooo, this one has troubles of a different sort coming up.

Next chapter: Tenten's view of the whole situation.


	3. Making Do

_Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come._

- Matt Groening

* * *

Hyuuga Neji enjoyed marriage and life as he had not enjoyed it since his father died. He strutted about the compound with an air of general content with the world, tinged slightly with just a bit of smug self-congratulations for having chosen so very well. It was such a strange sight that people watching pointed, and whispered, and thought strange things (most of them wholly wrong.) Yes, Hyuuga Neji was one of those very rare Hyuugas - or men in general, perhaps - who thoroughly enjoyed being married.

* * *

Tenten did not enjoy it as much; and this was for the very simple reason that _she _loved her spouse. To her credit, she understood that the fault lay with her, and laid on him no blame. Neji had made his position - and his feelings - very clear when he had made his proposal, and she held no illusions about what he meant. _She_ had known she was in love with him, but she had never held more than a half-wisp of a hope that he returned her feelings, and therefore suffered no disappointment -or, at least, hid it very well.

He still considered her his best friend, after all - and they had become even closer after their marriage, if not in the way most newlywed couples do. She liked being able to wake up in the same house as he, and the quiet hours they spent together in the evening after missions and sparring were done. She liked the feeling of having her own house - a _real _one, a beautiful tile-roofed villa, instead of the government-issued flat she had been living in since she was old enough to leave the orphanage - and of cooking meals for herself and her husband - so much so she felt a little like the little girl playing house that she had never been.

And if he had chosen her to wed, she argued to herself, that proved how high he held her in his esteem - he _trusted _her. And she never had to worry about his straying, or his being bound to some other woman - of some other female taking her place in his affections, platonic though they may be. And they never quarelled, not like Ino and Shikamaru or Naruto and Sakura - as even quiet Hinata and her own husband had done a few times.

Therefore, Tenten told herself fiercely, she was a fool and a greedy one - a daydreamer, an airhead, a - and this was the cruellest term she could find - a _fangirl _such as had chased Neji in their childhood - if she persisted in wishing that she could MAKE him fall in love with her.

She already had a much better life than most kunoichi could hope for. Why long for the moon and stars, then?

* * *

**AN**

And here's Tenten's excuse for letting Neji be such an ass. O love, perhaps you are a tenketsu that shuts off rational love. (sighs)

Thanks muuuuuuuuuchly for all the reviews, especially **Mystica **and **Wildcatt**, who encouraged me to get off my butt and post this.

Next chapter has things happening in response to the happy marriage.


	4. Sea Dreams

_What is a woman that you forsake her,  
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,  
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?_

_  
- _Harp Song of the Dane Women, Kipling

* * *

There was an unforeseen consequence to his marriage. The elders of the clan seemed to regard him as having transformed, instantly, into a more mature, more respectable version of himself, now that he was wed - as if his words had more import with a woman bound to him. (And, something in his mind reminds him, him to her) For aught he knew, it was true.

He was entrusted with more clan affairs now, becoming a respected and admired member of the Hyuuga elite. Men older than himself - but unwed, and so still living in the dormitory-halls - inclined their heads to him, and addressed him with respectful terms. His opinion was sought; he was called upon to lead.

His missions with his team lessened gradually, until he took no missions at all, his time being taken up completely by Hyuuga affairs - his spars with his new young wife followed suit a little more slowly, but soon they, too, were a thing of the past.

He was engrossed with his new work - but he felt, if he let himself dwell on it, that he missed his old life. Consequently he did not let himself often dwell upon it.

* * *

A singular image began to haunt Tenten's dreams, leaving her unhappy and upset in the mornings. She would wake with an ache in her chest, hugging herself for warmth in her expensive, beautiful, king-sized bed - which always seemed colder and lonelier for its size and feather-soft perfection.

She dreamed of the ocean at night, deep dark water turned silver by the light of the full moon. She stood with the waves licking around her bare ankles, and she was cold. She stooped down to capture a handful of sea in her hands - but the moon called for the tides, and the water slipped from her cupped palms.

She needed no interpreter; she knew what she was dreaming of. It was her own dream, wasn't it? She knew she was dreaming about Neji.

It felt like he was slipping out of her life - slowly, smoothly, but inexorably. He was impossible to hold as the water, and she had as much claim on him as any man had on the sea. Neji was water and moonlight - cold, beautiful, beloved, and fading away from her.

She lay her forehead on her knees for a long moment. A shudder wracked her thin body. For a minute she stayed thus, bent over and silent except for breaths; when she raised her head again, the face she presented the morning sun was calm and peaceful. No storm raged in her dark eyes.

She _was_ happy for her husband(-in-name). He was being feted by the elite of the clan; he was earning their trust. Had she really been so naive as to expect she would get to monopolize him - to receive the benefits of his presence always?

She would just have to adapt.

* * *

"She is quite beautiful."

"A nightingale in our garden. And the boy?"

"Proud of being asked to survey the training yards." A laugh, shared between male voices. "He will be no problem. They never are."


	5. Freedom's Cost

_drowned gold and purple and royal rings  
and all time past, was it all for this?  
times unforgotten, and treasures of things?  
_

- Swinburne, the Triumph of Time

* * *

The Branch were beholden to the Main, their servants, their slaves, the mark of their servitude graved upon their brows for all to see. But it was not - it could not be - all one-sided, and the Branch enjoyed some freedoms the Main could not. The happiest of them learned to focus on those simple pleasures and not on the bone-deep chains, knew that to do otherwise was to go mad from struggling and yearning.

One of these freedoms was that, unlike the Main, those of the Branch were free to _choose _their spouses, to make love-matches. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, and sometimes they married for reasons as mercenary as the Main's, but - and this was the important part - it was all done by their _own _choice, and for their own consideration.

The end result was that there were far more good-looking females in the Branch than in the Main.

But the wisest of the Branch knew that even their freedoms were not free - that the Main exacted toll from them for these things.

* * *

He was valued, he was needed, he was a _leader_, a leader of _Hyuugas_.....

...he was so utterly _bored_.

Neji sighed, leaned his face into his palm, and gazed out the window. He was seated at a desk carved of the finest hardwoods, in a chair custom-built to his measurement, and even the writing-implements he used for his paperwork were expensive, fountain-pens carved of green glass with golden nibs. Yet with all that luxury, the one thing he appreciated most about his office was the large window right beside his desk, the glimpse of non-office-bound freedom it afforded him. He left it open this morning, inhaling deeply as if drinking from the cool, sweet-scented breeze. The springtime morning was fresh, clean, sun-soaked - there was birdsong in the air, music from the small finches and starlings in the trees of the Hyuuga gardens.

(They weren't caged, Neji knew.)

His mind wandered, as it never used to wander, down old paths, remembering mornings like this with his team - on missions, training, just 'hanging out' as Tenten would put it. He missed it. He missed the satisfaction of a mission well-accomplished, he missed the exhilarated adrenaline rush of fights conducted at insane speeds, dodging a rain of weaponry that blocked out the light of the sun, the warm ache of muscles after a good training session.

He even missed the little things, like watching Lee set and then carry out his ludicrous self-inflicted 'punishments', and Gai-sensei's beaming at them as he urged them onto impossible accomplishments - and somehow, between exasperation, pricked pride, some very real moments of stupefied horror, and sheer cussed...hard work, managed to shove them over the lines of their own limits.

And Tenten. He began to absent-mindedly scribble her name in the margins of his paperwork. He missed her most of all, which was simultaneously to be expected - he spent the most time with her, so of course there would be more to miss - and stupid, because she lived right _there _with him, he went home to her every night...

He never saw her anymore, though.

* * *

"Tenten-chan."

She looked up, and immediately rose to her feet to bow, the etiquette-training that Neji and Hinata had given her having become reflex by now. She fought the urge to fidget, and to wipe her hands on her uniform pants. She was filthy, she knew - she'd just come back from a mission, and as usual she'd sat down at her workbench (she loved having a workbench) in the kitchen to begin cleaning her weapons, and so in addition to the blood and sweat and dirt she had smears of polish and turpentine and chemical cleanser.

Not the best face to present to a Main House Elder.

But the middle-aged old man only smiled at her, a gentle smile that reminded her a bit of the Sandaime, and made soothing motions with his hands.

"No, no - no need to stand on ceremony for me, Tenten-chan. I just wanted to see how the newest member of our clan was faring."

Tenten smiled nervously and dipped her head, but had no idea how to respond.

He smiled at her again.

"Why don't you walk with me a little, Tenten-chan?"


End file.
